The Government has squandered a valuable opportunity to eliminate childhood poverty in Ireland by voting down a Social Democrats\u2019 Private Members\u2019 Motion tonight, according to Jennifer Whitmore TD, the party\u2019s spokesperson for Children.<\/p>\n
Deputy Whitmore said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government\u2019s counter motion which was passed this evening is essentially a charter for guaranteeing that a certain number of our children will continue to live in consistent poverty. Their proposal for percentage-based targets simply acknowledge that a percentage of children still will stay in poverty. As recent history has shown, there is nothing ambitious about this.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll attempts by previous governments to meet childhood poverty reduction targets have failed time and time again. Our motion asked this Government to show political leadership and ambition by setting out to eliminate, not reduce, poverty levels for children during the lifetime of this Dail.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe proposed to achieve this objective through the establishment of an Oversight Oireachtas Committee and an inter-departmental Child Poverty Unit, overseen by the Department of the Taoiseach. By legislating for an end to consistent child poverty, we wanted to put children\u2019s rights front and centre of policy decisions across all key Government departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like to acknowledge the meaningful contributions made by other Opposition TDs who voted for our motion – including Sinn F\u00e9in, Labour, Solidarity-People Before Profit, Rural Independent Group, and Independents \u2013 as well as the support of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, One Family and Children\u2019s Rights Alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the lack of support for our motion from the three Government parties, the Social Democrats will continue to be a voice in the D\u00e1il for over 90,000 children who are living in consistent poverty \u2013 we will not give up fighting on their behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n
ENDS
\nSeptember 30, 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Government has squandered a valuable opportunity to eliminate childhood poverty in Ireland by voting down a Social Democrats\u2019 Private Members\u2019 Motion tonight, according to Jennifer Whitmore TD, the party\u2019s spokesperson for Children. Deputy Whitmore said: \u201cThe Government\u2019s counter motion which was passed this evening is essentially a charter for guaranteeing that a certain number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jennifer-whitmore","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n